A little about Labelium and Tough Mudder

Labelium is an international online marketing agency. For over 14 years, Labelium has helped drive the growth of prominent, high-profile websites, including LVMH, the L’Oréal Group, Sephora Europe, Club Med, Air France, Condé Nast Digital Europe and Société Générale, just to name a few. Their European, North American, South American, and Australian teams keep a close eye on the ever-evolving digital media space, allowing them to react quickly to changes and new technologies and recommend the most up-to-date solutions for their global clients.

Tough Mudder is a 10-12 mile obstacle course challenge designed by British Special Forces to test overall physical strength and mental grit while encouraging teamwork and camaraderie above all else. The largest team-based endurance event series, Tough Mudder is “probably the toughest event on the planet” and has hosted over two million participants in three continents since 2010.

Labelium wanted to increase productivity and ensure client wins

Labelium oversees a large number of client campaigns with limited visibility and works closely with them to increase visibility and brand awareness. In addition, understanding the emergence of social as a powerful tool to reach and grow audiences, Tough Mudder wanted to use a best-in-class audience marketing tool to increase brand awareness and market share.

Tough Mudder had never run a video and link ad campaign on their social channels and wanted to get a better sense of how many total ad views they could generate at a profitable CPA. They started with a singular, overarching objective: ensure a year-over-year positive net outcome from 2014 to 2015.

“Tough Mudder’s brand values on teamwork and camaraderie were integrated into our social ad campaign. With Marin Software and a strong and streamlined partnership focused on results, we were able to push the envelope and exceed all expectations. The fact that we increased video views by 16.3 million and saw exponential growth across all indicators clearly demonstrates that optimized social ad programs are a marketing imperative.”

– Mourad Zeggari / Managing Director, Labelium

Ad testing and optimization, coupled with audience segmentation

To meet the objectives of Tough Mudder and convert a lack of transparency into tangible results, Labelium chose Marin Social to A/B test a series of video and link ads. They built a Facebook Website Custom Audience to target people who previously expressed interest in the brand and would therefore be more likely to convert. Based on which ads drove more visitors to the Tough Mudder website, they could optimize their retargeting campaign accordingly.

Expectations exceeded

Tough Mudder saw positive increases in all brand awareness and conversion performance indicators, as well as associated decreases in ad spend: